1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a slim key structure and slim keyboard having the same. In particular, the present invention relates to a slim key structure with a guiding structure, which including guiding posts on a keycap and an orientation structure on a housing matching the guiding posts, and a slim keyboard having the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic products, including input devices such as keyboards, are developed toward the trend of reduced thickness. The conventional keyboards can be generally divided into two main categories. The first kind of the keyboard is utilizing a guiding structure, and is usually applied on desktop keyboard. The guiding structure is usually formed on a bottom surface of the keycap for guiding a guiding post of a keycap. This kind keyboard provides comfortable and affirmative operating feeling and requires lower manufacturing cost, but often suffers the disadvantage of having thicker physical profile. The other kind of the keyboard is utilizing lower-profiled scissor structures and elastic pieces. Each key structure has a keycap disposed on the scissor structure and the elastic piece. Such kind keyboard is usually used in notebook computer because of its reduced thickness comparing to the keyboard that utilizes conventional guiding structures. However, the material cost and structural complexity for this type of keyboard are generally higher.
For the purpose of reducing the thickness of desktop keyboard with guiding structure, there is a conventional way used the scissor structure to replace the guiding structure. However, the material cost and the manufacturing cost cannot be reduced effectively. Therefore, the development is limited.
In other words, the keyboard with guiding structure has advantages of lower cost, enough pressing stroke and good operating feeling, but the problem is hard to reduce the total thickness. On the contrary, the keyboard with scissor structure has advantage of thin profile, but the disadvantage is hard to reduce the material cost and manufacturing cost. Therefore, it is desirable to propose a novel slim keyboard to overcome the above-mentioned problems.